A frightful foreboding filled the room as Adira stood before her mother. Her cheeks were ruby red with anger, and her mother’s skin was glowing in the sunset’s scarlet lights. Both women held onto their waists and leaned forward as if bracing themselves against the other’s attack. While watching the two squaring off, one would…
[This piece was submitted to the Future of Life Institute as part of a global AI World Building competition. The full submission containing more material was selected among the top 20 finalists. If you are reading this before June 15 2022, like the finalist announcement on Twitter and send us your feedback via the main…
I wish I could see you as vividly as I see my reflection in the mirror. I wish you were here. Right now. I wish you could hear me as clearly as I hear my thoughts. Technology has not yet provided the tools for me to reach out to you in the future, and neither…
I arrived in Kilifi at the break of dawn on the midnight bus from Nairobi. In the final moments of the trip, as the bus crossed the Kilifi Bridge — the longest bridge in the country — I caught a grand mural of colours as the sun reached above the ocean to claim the skies,…
The tender human heart has its seasons: Its summer’s joy, but sorrows when it snows. When silence comes, and peace surrounds, Its autumn falls, then solitude, its golden spring! Composed by V on 30th November, 2009 04:57
The pungent fumes of cheap cigarettes had chased me away from the back of the bar – where I liked to sit – to the counter. I found a spot that was being bathed by the evening breeze hissing through a broken pane and pulled a stool. It’s fine, I thought, no need to fuss…
The Greater East African Colony: 2084 AD Department of Astrobiology (DoA), Sector C. 12: 45pm He sat silently at his bench, motionless, and not a hair on his skin acknowledged the presence of the young lass hovering beside him. Aliya Kendi was a post-doctoral beauty that had but a scanty supply of flesh around her…
“I need you to lie on your side, Mr. James. Can you do that for me? Good, good. Now, pull your knees up towards your chest and relax.” Mr. James complied. It was his sixth day here, and he was now willing to do anything in order to get out. Well, perhaps not anything, but,…
Parents often toss a prayer into the heavens when their little minions run off to school – their small hands clutching onto their jingling pockets, heavy with the pennies that they had stolen and those that their mothers had reluctantly given them. Parents hope that their children’s march…
The sharp clank of a metal bar colliding with bone filled the midnight air. A scream, and then silence. The weapon glowed dimly as it was spun, melting into the air with the typical transparency of a rotating blade. Beneath an amber street lamp in Nairobi, a man lay dead. At arm’s length, another man…